"to commission another full-length opera from the team. Gilbert and Sullivan scored their first international hit with ""H.M.S. Pinafore"" (1878), satirising the rise of unqualified people to positions of authority and poking good-natured fun at the Royal Navy and the English obsession with social status (building on a theme introduced in ""The Sorcerer"", love between members of different social classes). As with many of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, a surprise twist changes everything dramatically near the end of the story. Gilbert oversaw the designs of sets and costumes, and he directed the performers on stage. He sought realism in"
"and his wife Pamela. His siblings included Thomas (born 1854), David Samuel (born 1859) and Robert (born 1860). He trained at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Cadwaladr made his debut in Wagner's ""Rienzi"" with the Carl Rosa Opera Company in 1879, aged 22. That June, he joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, playing the leading tenor role of Ralph Rackstraw in Gilbert and Sullivan's ""H.M.S. Pinafore"" on tour. During that tour, he became part of an important historical footnote when he originated the role of Frederic in the hastily assembled single British copyright performance of ""The Pirates of Penzance"""
"singer, he has appeared in oratorios and many operas, including Mozart operas ""Don Giovanni"" (as ""Don Ottavio""), and ""The Abduction From the Seraglio"" (as ""Belmonte""), amongst others. He also appeared in State Opera of South Australia production of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera """"H.M.S. Pinafore"""" as Ralph Rackstraw, alongside Dennis Olsen and Judith Henley. The production was broadcast, throughout Australia, as a simultaneous television and stereo radio broadcast, by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Edmonds has sung in opera at Covent Garden and the Edinburgh Festival and has appeared with the British Broadcasting Corporation as well as appearing in concert in"
"witty, literate, and often outrageously funny dialogue and lyrics [and] has a score that ... has plenty of tunes for the audience to go away humming"". Sir George Power, the tenor who created the role of Ralph Rackstraw, opined in later life that the secret of the success of the Savoy operas is the way in which ""Sullivan entered into the spirit of Gilbert's topsy-turvy humour, and was pompous when Gilbert was sprightly, or, when Gilbert's satire was keenest and most acid, consciously wallowed in sentiment."" Another commentator has suggested that the opera's enduring success lies in its focus on"
"intends her to marry Sir Joseph Porter, the First Lord of the Admiralty. She abides by her father's wishes at first, but Sir Joseph's advocacy of the equality of humankind encourages Ralph and Josephine to overturn conventional social order. They declare their love for each other and eventually plan to elope. The captain discovers this plan, but, as in many of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, a surprise disclosure changes things dramatically near the end of the story. Drawing on several of his earlier ""Bab Ballad"" poems, Gilbert imbued this plot with mirth and silliness. The opera's humour focuses on"
"production of Gilbert and Sullivan's ""H.M.S. Pinafore"" to raise funds to get it unstuck. Much of the musical consists of a play within a play, as the company presents a musically updated version of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera; the boat pilot (played by Bill Robinson in the original production) takes a major role as Sir Joseph Porter, First Lord of the Admiralty. Another actor (Avon Long in the original) sings and dances the role of Captain Corcoran, while the part of Josephine goes to an Andrews Sisters-style trio of women from the company chorus (Sheila Guyse, Ida James, and"
"Players, Charles Court Opera, and the festival's own National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company. In 1995, the operators of the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival formed an opera company to provide festivalgoers with professional productions of the Savoy operas. The company was soon called the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company. It engaged such performers as Richard Suart, Simon Butteriss, Bruce Graham, Gillian Knight, Barry Clark, Michael Rayner, Jill Pert, Gareth Jones, Patricia Leonard, Donald Maxwell, Oliver White, Rebecca Bottone, Ian Belsey and the Opera Babes. John Owen Edwards, David Russell Hulme, David Steadman or Andrew Nicklin have usually served as"
"of Gilbert and Sullivan (G&S) and other light operas of the era. In December 1906 he shared the role of Nanki-Poo in the first recording of ""The Mikado"". This was released on single-sided gramophone records by G&T then re-released on double-sided discs by HMV in 1912. He shared the role of Sir Joseph Porter on the first recording of the G&S opera ""H.M.S. Pinafore"" which was recorded by the Russell Hunting company on eleven Edison cylinders in 1907. In 1999 these early cylinders were re-discovered after they had been thought lost. He probably sang Marco in ""The Gondoliers"" (1907 for"
"review of ""Pinafore"" in ""The New York Times"" commented , ""The Ralph Rackstraw, Mr. Hugh Talbot, has a light, pleasant tenor voice, which was not thoroughly under his control last evening, and he is also the best actor who has appeared here in the character"". On 31 December 1879, he created the role of Frederic in ""The Pirates of Penzance"". Talbot's Frederic was perhaps the most roundly criticized performance of any Gilbert and Sullivan opera's opening night. Nearly every critic eviscerated him in reviews. ""The New York Times"" reviewer wrote: The essential part of the young pirate apprentice received inadequate"
"H.M.S. Pinafore H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical theatre piece up to that time. ""H.M.S. Pinafore"" was Gilbert and Sullivan's fourth operatic collaboration and their first international sensation. The story takes place aboard the ship HMS ""Pinafore"". The captain's daughter, Josephine, is in love with a lower-class sailor, Ralph Rackstraw, although her father"
"all nine of the lead comic baritone roles in Gilbert and Sullivan's famous Savoy Operas in London from 1877 to 1889, including the pompous First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Joseph Porter, in ""H.M.S. Pinafore"" (1878); Major-General Stanley in ""The Pirates of Penzance"", who is an expert at everything except ""military knowledge"" (1880); the aesthetic poet, Reginald Bunthorne in ""Patience"" (1881); the love-lonely Lord Chancellor in ""Iolanthe"" (1882); the sarcastic cripple, King Gama, in ""Princess Ida"" (1884); Ko-Ko the cheap tailor, elevated to the post of Lord High Executioner, in ""The Mikado"" (1885); the accursed Robin Oakapple in ""Ruddigore"" (1887);"
"Blanche Roosevelt as Josephine, Alice Barnett as Little Buttercup, Furneaux Cook as Dick Deadeye, Hugh Talbot as Ralph Rackstraw and Jessie Bond as Cousin Hebe, some of whom had been in the ""Pinafore"" cast in London. To these, he added some American singers, including Signor Brocolini as Captain Corcoran. Alfred Cellier came to assist Sullivan, while his brother François remained in London to conduct ""Pinafore"" there. Gilbert and Sullivan chose talented actors who were not well-known stars, and so they did not command high fees. They then tailored their operas to the particular abilities of these performers. The skill with"
"His mother took him to America, where she was performing, but he returned to England at age 20. Finding that he could not make a living as a painter, he gained some success as a drawing-room entertainer, eventually moving into acting. He first appeared on the stage at St. George's Hall, London, in the German Reed Entertainments and then turned to light opera, joining Richard D'Oyly Carte's Comedy Opera Company in 1879 to appear as Sir Joseph Porter in ""H.M.S. Pinafore"" on tour. He continued to play the Gilbert and Sullivan comic ""patter"" roles on tour in Britain until 1881."
"George Grossmith George Grossmith (9 December 1847 – 1 March 1912) was an English comedian, writer, composer, actor, and singer. His performing career spanned more than four decades. As a writer and composer, he created 18 comic operas, nearly 100 musical sketches, some 600 songs and piano pieces, three books and both serious and comic pieces for newspapers and magazines. Grossmith is best remembered for two aspects of his career. First, he created a series of nine memorable characters in the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan from 1877 to 1889, including Sir Joseph Porter, in ""H.M.S. Pinafore"" (1878), the"
"season, appearing only as Nanki-Poo in ""The Mikado"". He then continued to perform occasionally, appearing, for example, as Lord Tolloller with the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company in 2001 at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival, where he also occasionally gave master classes or participated in coachings and lectures for many years. Potter died in 2016 at the age of 80. With the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and Decca Records, he recorded the Duke of Dunstable (1961), Colonel Fairfax (1964), Hilarion (1964), Nanki-Poo in ""A Gilbert & Sullivan Spectacular"" (1965) (excerpts), and Frederic (1968), as well as ""Songs and Snatches"""
"(Marquise), Scott Russell (Bertuccio), Emmie Owen (Zerbinette), Florence Perry (Bianca), R. Scott Fishe (Gerard de Montigny), and Walter Passmore (Bobinet). Richard Temple joined in the revised version, as did the experienced singer Florence St. John, who made her Savoy debut in the work. Gilbert and Sullivan's ""Utopia Limited"" was playing more weakly than its producer, Richard D'Oyly Carte, had expected, and he anticipated that he would need a new work for the Savoy Theatre for the summer of 1894. Messager was enjoying a growing international reputation, and Carte had already produced Messager's opera ""La Basoche"" at his Royal English Opera"
"James Stuart (opera director) James F. Stuart (23 December 1928, Baton Rouge, Louisiana — 7 March 2005) was an American opera director and operatic tenor. He began his career performing and touring with Dorothy Raedler’s American Savoyards. He became a specialist in the patter roles of Gilbert and Sullivan, including Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B. in ""H.M.S. Pinafore"", Ko-Ko in ""The Mikado"", and Reginald Bunthorne in ""Patience"" among others. In 1979 he founded the Ohio Light Opera in Wooster, Ohio, serving as the company's artistic director for two decades. During his tenure there he also often worked as producer, stage director,"
"era. Later in his career, when Gilbert wrote the famous series of Savoy operas with Arthur Sullivan, he reused elements of ""A Sensation Novel"" in their opera ""Ruddigore"". ""A Sensation Novel"" is the fourth in a series of six short musical entertainments written by Gilbert for Thomas German Reed and his wife Priscilla between 1869 and 1875. The German Reeds presented respectable, family-friendly musical entertainments at their Gallery of Illustration beginning in 1855, at a time when the theatre in Britain had gained a poor reputation as an unsavoury institution and was not attended by much of the middle class."
"to Brough and after first settling in Kansas he moved his family east to Portsmouth, Ohio and then Cincinnati. Marlowe obtained the nickname of ""Fanny"" and in her early teens began her career in the chorus of a juvenile opera company. While touring with the company for nearly a year performing Gilbert and Sullivan's ""H.M.S. Pinafore"" (1879), under the direction of Colonel Robert E.J. Miles (manager of the Cincinnati Opera House) she was given the part of Sir Joseph Porter. She later played in W. S. Gilbert's ""Pygmalion and Galatea"". Her training and initial success was due primarily to Miles's"
"The opera premiered on 7 March 1896, and Sullivan conducted the orchestra, as he always did on opening nights. Costumes were by Percy Anderson. The opening night was a decided success, and the critics praised Gilbert's direction, Pálmay's singing and acting, Walter Passmore as Rudolph, and the cast in general. There were some reservations, however. ""The Times""'s review of the opening night's performance said: The reviewer stated that the jokes might be funnier if the dialogue between them were ""compressed"". ""The Manchester Guardian"" concurred: ""Mr. Gilbert's tendency to over-elaboration has nowhere shown itself so obtrusively... Mr. Gilbert has introduced too"
"and went to Texas to be part of an aviation unit. There he contracted meningitis and died in 1918. Richard Mansfield Richard Mansfield (24 May 1857 – 30 August 1907) was an English actor-manager best known for his performances in Shakespeare plays, Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and the play ""Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"". Mansfield was born in Berlin and spent his early childhood on Heligoland, Germany, an island in the North Sea, then under British rule. His parents were Erminia Rudersdorff (1822–1882), a Russian-born operatic soprano, and Maurice Mansfield (died 1861), a British London-based wine merchant. His grandfather was"
"series of Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and during his years away, he had become the most popular solo piano entertainer in the country. The Savoy audience was eager to see him perform together on stage with his successor in the Savoy opera roles, Walter Passmore. Rehearsals began in December 1896, an unusually long rehearsal period for the Savoy, but Mackenzie later recalled that even the company felt that the work was not wanted. London's leading stage director, Charles Harris, was engaged, but he died a few days before the opera premiered, leaving the Cartes to finish his work. Richard D'Oyly"
"Gilbert and Sullivan operas performed by the company during her tenure (""The Sorcerer"" was not performed by the company until just before she left in 1971). These roles were: Little Buttercup in ""H.M.S. Pinafore"", Ruth in ""The Pirates of Penzance"", Lady Jane in ""Patience"", the Queen of the Fairies in ""Iolanthe"", Lady Blanche in ""Princess Ida"", Katisha in ""The Mikado"", Dame Hannah in ""Ruddigore"", Dame Carruthers in ""The Yeomen of the Guard"", and the Duchess of Plaza-Toro in ""The Gondoliers"". At the same time, she occasionally performed in concerts with Gilbert and Sullivan for All. Palmer married Norman Wilfred Wright"
"made other minor changes in the score. The ""Matter Patter"" trio from ""Ruddigore"" and ""Sorry her lot"" from ""H.M.S. Pinafore"", two other Gilbert and Sullivan operas, were interpolated into the show. The production also restored Gilbert and Sullivan's original New York ending, with a reprise of the Major-General's song in the Act II finale. Linda Ronstadt starred as Mabel, Rex Smith as Frederic, Kevin Kline as the Pirate King, Patricia Routledge as Ruth (replaced by Estelle Parsons for the Broadway transfer), George Rose as the Major-General, and Tony Azito as the Sergeant of Police. Kline won a Tony Award for"
"di Chamonix"", but afterwards he was seen only in a few concerts with the company and in a few concerts elsewhere. In the autumn of 1879, Richard D'Oyly Carte sent one of his theatrical companies to play the first authorized production ""H.M.S. Pinafore"" in America, and the company also prepared for the opening of the next Gilbert and Sullivan Opera, ""The Pirates of Penzance"", for its première in New York. ""Pinafore"" opened at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on December 1, 1879, and Talbot was cast in the leading tenor role of Ralph Rackstraw. The opening night"
"offered nothing but pleasure."" Raedler also directed Gilbert and Sullivan productions for City Opera and for the City Center Gilbert & Sullivan Company, which had casts including such Metropolitan Opera singers as Nico Castel, Muriel Costa-Greenspon, Robert Hale, Ellen Shade, and Frank Poretta, Sr., as well as Broadway actors Nancy Dussault, Barbara Meister, Ruth Kobart, and Raymond Allen. Raedler also brought several of the former principal actors from American Savoyards, including John Carle, Bill Tost, James Wilson, Sandra Darling, and Ruth Ray (calling them ""The Five Savoyards""), to New York City and Connecticut public schools to perform Gilbert and Sullivan"
"be a best seller worldwide. Hobson's Gilbert and Sullivan roles with Opera Australia, include Nanki-Poo in ""The Mikado"", Marco Palmieri in ""The Gondoliers"", Ralph Rackstraw in ""H.M.S. Pinafore"" and the Defendant in ""Trial by Jury"". Hobson returned to the role of Frederic in the record-breaking Opera Australia production of ""The Pirates of Penzance"" with seasons during 2006 in Sydney at the Sydney Opera House, in Canberra, and in Brisbane at the Lyric Theatre, Queensland Performing Arts Centre. The national tour continued in 2007, with seasons in Adelaide and Melbourne, making a total of 100 performances in ten months. Although his"
"on the Decca label or under licence from Decca on Sounds on CD, a private label specialising in Gilbert and Sullivan recordings. Reed also appeared in the 1966 film version of ""The Mikado"" and the 1973 video of ""H.M.S. Pinafore"" as Ko-Ko and Sir Joseph Porter, respectively. A 1965 BBC television broadcast of ""Patience"" with Reed as Bunthorne is apparently lost. He was also the voice of Robin Oakapple in the 1967 Halas and Batchelor ""Ruddigore"" cartoon. A collection of Reed's patter songs, entitled ""Gilbert & Sullivan: Great Patter Songs"", compiled to celebrate his 25-year anniversary with D'Oyly Carte, was"
"works of Gilbert and Sullivan at major theatres and concert halls throughout the United Kingdom and in France, Germany, Holland, Spain, New York, Bermuda, the Far East and aboard the QE2 on the World Cruise. He was a principal baritone with the Regency Opera Company in ""Tosca"" and ""The Marriage of Figaro"" (1986), English Festival Opera's ""La boheme"" (1995) and Pimlico Opera's tour of ""La Traviata"", as well as baritone soloist in the ""Magic of Broadway"" in Yarmouth and ""Iolanthe"" for Opera Options at Hever Castle. He also performed Mountararat in ""Iolanthe"" and Mentchikoff in ""The Count of Luxembourg"" in"
"appear in Gilbert and Sullivan together into the 1990s. During his Gilbert and Sullivan for All years, Round also appeared as Arthur Sullivan on tour with Donald Adams in ""Tarantara! Tarantara!"", a musical about the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership by Ian Taylor. Among other non-Gilbert and Sullivan appearances in the 1960s, Round played Henry Higgins in ""My Fair Lady"". In the 1970s, Round and Adams presented a television series about the Savoy operas, devoting each programme to an individual opera. Throughout his career, Round continued to give concerts and to sing in oratorio and recitals. He was frequently heard on"
"a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, such as in the film ""The Girl Said No"". There are also a number of Gilbert and Sullivan biographical films, such as Mike Leigh's ""Topsy-Turvy"" (2000) and ""The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan"" (1953), as well as shows about the partnership, including a 1938 Broadway show, ""Knights of Song"" and a 1975 West End show called ""Tarantara! Tarantara!"" It is not surprising, given the focus of Gilbert on politics, that politicians and political observers have often found inspiration in these works. Chief Justice of the United States William Rehnquist added gold stripes to his judicial"
"company was merely a non-profit community theater organization. Under Strohmier's leadership the company focused mostly on light opera and operettas with a particular focus on the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Strohmier worked closely with Louis Burkot, the then director of the Dartmouth Glee Club. After Strohmier's departure in 1987, Burkot became artistic director of the company and began moving Opera North towards a more serious operatic repertoire. The 1988 Opera North hired producer Flo Klausner and opera director Ron Luchsinger for the company's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's ""Iolanthe"". Since then Klausner has served as executive producer for many"
"Penzance"", and so on. Similarly, Mrs. Partlet in ""The Sorcerer"" transformed into Little Buttercup in ""Pinafore"", then into Ruth, the piratical maid-of-all-work in ""Pirates"". Relatively unknown performers whom Gilbert and Sullivan engaged early in the collaboration would stay with the company for many years, becoming stars of the Victorian stage. These included George Grossmith, the principal comic; Rutland Barrington, the lyric baritone; Richard Temple, the bass-baritone; and Jessie Bond, the mezzo-soprano soubrette. ""The Pirates of Penzance"" (New Year's Eve, 1879) also poked fun at grand opera conventions, sense of duty, family obligation, the ""respectability"" of civilisation and the peerage, and"